Philosopher King IS granting units and Beloved, just in case it helps pinpoint causee of issues.

... Actually, it is looking like it is not granting units to train, either. It IS granting Berserkers Rage, however.

Stupid question, but for Northern Leader ambition, I see no Freeze the Land spell after majoring. Is that just Earthshape: Snow?

Minor-ish point, but the Chariot should receive the cavalry and larget target tags/classes. Also, not even counting the benefit of unlocking specific mercenaries, getting new ambitions for the leaders is VERY welcome!!!!!!!!

Is there a way to stop the game from giving me mercenaries as my starting units? Or at least reduce its preference towards it.

I had to keep recreating a new game for my High faction lbecause the game kept insisting on giving me Sorcerer Apprentices instead of a cultural Tier II Support or Battle Mage from Powerful Evokers (what I wanted was the Sun Priest).

New Update is live, thanks to Visie Mago the Chariot bug has been fixed.

Also, following suggestions and a personal wish of mine, the mod now will include a lot more Hero Ambitions to gain Mercenaries.

I believe this is a better wau tham creating a bunch of society traits, as this gives more emergent gameplay to discover new mercenaries, plus with the Faction Data, you can guarantee then using heros as well.

So here's a short description of the new Ambitions in this update and their reward:

Eradicator - Reaver Company
National Hero - Band of Iron
Occultist - Knowledge Passive (Future Occult or Vampire Mercenaries TBD)
Philosopher King - Sacred Band
Privateer - Pirates
Nomad Leader - Elephants + Sword Dancer
Northern Leader - Highlanders
Shadow Manipulator - Seduce (Future Occult or Vampire Mercenaries TBD)
Warmage - Council of Mages

Plus a few flavourfull ones, just because i felt like it:

Slayer - Feed on Chaos
Strategist - Cunning
Tyrant - Opress

After the update Mercenary State now appears

Either way, thanks for all your hard work!

Have you thought at all about/would you ever consider adding society traits that only allow access to certain mercenary units? I really like the new units, but it would be awesome to only allow factions to have access to certain mercenary groups.

Thank You, wonderful wonderful mod!

Update is live and here are the notes:

Added new Mercenarie band - Sacred Band. (Phalanxes and Chariots)
Added new Mercenarie Building. (Preparation for Season 3)
Added a few more Hero Ambitions. (Thinking about expanding this into the mod even more eventually)
Rebalanced some units in according with the DLC.

Know Bug - Some forms don't know how to ride the Heavy Chariot (Seems to be on Triumph side, will possible be fixed by itself on their next update)

Works great. Mercenary Society trait doesn't show up, though I'm not sure if its just not working, or is supposed to be free cities only. The only other thing is that the contractors ignore resurgence. Not sure if that was intended or not, but it does stop you from getting around their one-time use mechanics

is this up to date?

This is great news, I really like this mod a lot. I am glad it is not being abandoned

Bagas' working on it, he's fixing and testing all of his mods simultaneously so it should be done around this week-end.

Update would be awesome!

good one, but i dont like some things, should have (far)higher gold cost, but no draft cost(or hard reduced), cause you hire them, i dont know how to obtain them via rally if you have no wonder or free city, i dont even know if they show up in rally if I have one of them, maybe they need higher spawn rate, and rally should be unlocked without needing a free city or wonder

@Bagas The Blade Dancer doesn't have an image in the recruitment screen and is invisible on the world map. It doesn't seem to me to be a conflict since everything else is fine.

How compatible is this with Cosmetic mods? I know the Retinue mod works with the Tome and Cultural unit alternate appearance mod

New update is live to fix a few bugs and round up the Mercenary Band roster, now all structures have 3 bands each, and all base Cultures have a band themed around it.

So here are the Notes:

Fixed Mercenary Commander Ambition Bugs.

Added Nomad Leader Ambition - Because i like Elephants being around.

Added the Broken Lords Mercenary Band.

Reworked Guts, i mean, the Champion of the Hawk to fix the Sword Animation Issue.

@Bagas thx for the feedback ! I'll dive in a game rn knowing this ;)

Doesn't really matter as it fits the faction lore i was going for.
Great mod btw !

@Kenoki it's confirmed, it seems it's only counting infestations on Water towards the goal, well, that's what happen when you test it with cheats enabled lol.

I already worked the fix, which will be included on the next update that will be coming with the Dark Culture themed Mercenary Band

@Bagas have you tested the Mercenary Hero Dedication part ?
It seems i can't get it to work despite my efforts...
Should the hero lead the attack himself maybe ?
Any specifics on the infestation themselves ?

Maybe it's a mod incompabitility, should i place your mod on top or bottom to limit potential conflicts ?

THANK YOU SO MUCH. LOVE THIS MOD

Hey guys, the new DLC is live and here's the update notes:

Oathsworn support added.
Fixed some Modularity Bugs.

New Mercenary Band added - Pirates.
New Mercenary Band added - Ronins.

Divided Condottieri building into 3 mutual exclusive buildings and reduced their cost.
(The unit bloat was getting crazy)

Caravan Guard Reworked - Now named Blade Dancer with dual wielding.

Tempest Guard renamed to Pellucid Guard - More fitting for their damage channel (previous one was a dumb pun of "Sea Guard")

Reaver's Gunner Snapshot changed to Maskman Shot, extra damage but lower accuracy.

Added a few new ways to get Mercenaries.

New Mercenary Hero Dedication - Complete Infestations to unlock the Condottieri Chain Building on their city and get bonus gold in Bounties.

Expanded Privateer Hero Dedication - Now includes Pirates Unit as unlockable in it's reward.

Would be nice if this got fixed as the faces are missing.

Merc mod works fine for me, except I don't know how to recruit the contractors. Then again I did not take the Mercenary State society trait.

Instead I get the joy of fighting stack after stack of wild animals and umbral demons, all of who have contractors! lol

Yo, Bagas, my dude, great mod! Check your discord for a little bit of my extended take, steam says "can't post more then 1000 characters at once" =D

Umbral strider breaks war elephants.

I just wanted to say that I am using this Mod and whatever you are doing, keep on doing it! This Mod is so freaking cool It brings lots of spice to the game and much needed combat effective units at the beginning of the game. I find myself loving Rally's now. Looking for the next Mercenary unit.

nice!!
one of the things i missed from planetfall were garrisons and the building mods from aow3 that added additional troops during city sieges.

@SDgamer That's just a Defender with a new skin from Culture Makeover Add-On, you can find all mercenaries bands included in the mod by searching for "Contractor" in the culture menu.

Because i'm trying to strike a careful balance here, both in concept and power level, if those units stay in battle not only they count as a unit itself, but it would also be difficult to make them one use only. Losing a unit in spawn is pretty rare, so that's not a huge problem imo.

But the problem is the concept itself (as i said it's a proof of concept, meaning it probably not the best version of such a unit), is that the Contractors aren't supposed to be massed or reusable, because they would turn pretty insane if they could, that's why i'm making it a somewhat rare unit and used mainly by the Vassals, (that are already considered sort of weak in the first place).

What the Contractor are supposed to do, is to let you use T2 in the late game without feeling bad about the army slot (turning them into chaff, units that already would die in battle do not care if they are 1 battle only).

Why not make a unit that summons mercenary instead? Less likely for them to spawn on bad terrain on combat start. Plus the ai priorities summoning skill from my experience.

are unit visuals dictated by culture or mercenary group? The screenshots show Desert Sword and Shield units but, they didn't pop up in the unit library when i checked for them

i take it the Levies mod you are going to introduce involves city defense?